Create a Sales Funnel for Email Marketing

It is clear that the goal of any marketing strategy is to achieve conversions and customer loyalty. It’s no different with Email Marketing, where we look for prospects to become customers. Using a Sales Funnel for Email Marketing can help you create a solid strategy that achieves great results.

What is the sales funnel?

The sales funnel, is the process by which all the steps that a potential customer will take are defined from the very moment they make first contact with your company or service until they become a recurring customer.

The user will have to go through different stages or levels for which we’ve created email marketing campaigns with adapted content, according to the current stage this potential client is at. The goal of a sales funnel for Email Marketing is to guide customers to purchase and maintain a relationship for a long time.

What are the stages of a sales funnel for Email Marketing?

When the user has made first contact with the brand and is part of your contact list, you can start the tour through the stages of the Email Marketing Funnel that you designed as part of your strategy.

A Sales Funnel for Email Marketing can have four main stages:

Discovery

In this first stage the potential customer finds out about your brand, and grows interested in the products or services you offer. They become curious about your brand but are not yet aware of the fact that your product or service can potentially satisfy their needs. In this stage we will try to capture their attention, and all the information that you deliver must be educational, even if you do not talk directly about sales. Simply make first contact by delivering content about your sector, the advantages of your product and the benefits you offer.

Once you have made them part of your contact list, start by creating first contact by sending a welcome email that includes:

A personalized welcome

A short introduction to your product, brand or service

A call to action that redirects them to your website or that gives them some free, valuable content

This series of first contact emails can be a single welcome message or divided into several where in a few days you send an email with a special offer thanking for the subscription, and then send an Ebook that details the benefits of your product. Remember, the sale is not yet what you seek. You just want to provide your subscriber all the information possible, so that it may generate a need for your product or service.

Consideration

In this stage, the user now understands that your product would be beneficial to reaching their goals. It is time to show them all the solutions that your brand has for solving their needs, therefore, all the content that you send to them must provide value and show them the tools you provide.

It is time that the emails you send, contain material such as case studies from your sector, articles from a blog, or a guide with tips. With this, you will be making sure that your potential client does not forget about you but also educates them in what you offer and how this can help them.

Each email you send will reinforce the relationship with your subscriber, so it should always be a personalized message, crafted with attention and care to the subject lines and content. Plan your deliveries by taking the behavior of your contacts into account and adapting your content around this. The frequency of sending will depend on this data, and remember that it may take a few days or weeks to train your subscriber.

It is possible that you lose some contacts in this stage, as you will simply be doing a lot of filtering. Take the statistics into account and closely evaluate the behavior of each campaign you have defined within this stage.

Conversion

Here the user has had the time to assess all the options and offers to solve their need. The customer may already have made the decision to close the purchase but there still may be a bit of indecision. What to do? It is the precise moment to send the email that gives a final push towards conversion.

This is where you will have to refine your goals and send personalized and specialized content. For example, an exclusive discount, personalized advice, promotions by purchase, the reminder of an abandoning shopping cart. The message will become completely direct and will make the customer understand the possibilities that they have if they close the sale with your brand.

Loyalty

Congratulations! You have achieved the sales objective, your potential client has become a customer. This is where the process of maintaining loyalty or, merely retaining users subscriptions begins. At this stage, the objective will be to create a loyal and committed customer with the brand. This is a fundamental step in the email marketing strategy, and it is in this step that users show they have fully committed to your brand.

After closing the sale, send a thankful email, to which the customer can give their option and evaluate your brand. For this stage, automate shipments where you can send information about the products from time to time, share news about your brand or a special offer about new products.

The purchase should not be the end of the relationship, so you must use this stage to create that close link between the customer and your brand. Without even knowing it, your user can become the ambassador of your brand, product or service and recommend it to people who may need it.

Start designing your Funnel

Using the principles of a sales funnel in your Email Marketing strategy, you will be able to lead your potential customers through their stages to strengthen the relationship, no matter what phase they are currently in. Using the "Funnel" method, will help you filter towards those potential customers who are really willing to reach the conversion stage.

Use automated messages, segment your lists, and use dynamic fields to personalize your messages and review your statistics. This way, you will be able to recognize the ideal content for your users and get the best results through the use of the Sales Funnel for Email Marketing.